Anchorage Daily News

Inupiaq Eskimo artist Aakatchaq Schaeffer uses only her first name in her artwork. Born and raised in Kotzebue, she began her career in art by painting portraits and has worked professionally since 1999. She started with acrylics but has moved on to animal skins, metal and wood.

She writes of an ever-present longing within herself to represent her love for her culture -- her ancestry and background. "It still comes out," she says, "no matter what the medium.

Her latest work consists of a series of caribou skin masks. The skin "erupts," she says, "into a moving and painful being."

Her show now up at the Alaska Native Arts Foundation Gallery, 500 W. Sixth Ave., includes work in a wide range of media and approaches. Many of the materials must appear quite exotic to the tourists who stroll Sixth Avenue though the summer: coyote fur, wolf teeth, snake vertebrae, fossilized walrus, mammoth ivory, walrus stomach and beluga intestine.

The exhibition is so inclusive that it leaves the impression of an artist struggling to find her way. The busy assemblage of wood and metal pieces, skins, drawings and paintings gives the appearance of a group show rather than a single artist exploring or refining her chosen craft. It would have been better to be more selective or to narrow the focus for the purpose of a single presentation.

Likewise, the styles as used by a single artist are diverse. Black drip painting a la Jackson Pollock appears on the wood of "Swan in Repose." An Easter Island-type elongated portrait is rendered in silver acrylic on black. The pastel figures in "Embrace" are like the charcoal drawings of Kathe Kollwitz.

In both "Embrace" and another drawing, "Inner Figure," the grid and strongly fibrous handmade paper interfere with the imagery, as though the work is being viewed through a fence or curtain. Seen separately, the materials are interesting, but the content/ subject matter of each drawing is sublimated because the overlays compete for attention.

The most compelling works are the masks. They look like the death masks of antiquity -- molded from life or lifelike forms, stretching to represent the hidden soul beneath the facade. The simplest of the forms, without decoration or applique, are the most powerful.

The veins of a beluga intestine used in one mask are strikingly representative of the human vascular system. Though not emphasized, fine-quality stitching is evident along the sides. It would be good to see such intricacies explored still further in the masks.

Since the dried caribou skin, coffee-stained parchment and overhanging animal furs are dark, one must struggle a bit to see the masks themselves. Several look like they were molded from the same basic form but adorned differently.

Origins and sources of artist inspiration are enigmatic. The masks become reproductions -- distant representations of humankind void of individuality. We are left to wonder: Who are these particular people, and what did they think and feel?

There is a sensibility to "Native art" that is intrinsic, and no doubt old white guys like me won't always get it. At the same time, there are aesthetic principles that are more or less universal in art. I have often thought that the division between Native arts and (let's call it) Western European art is somewhat artificial. The separation can become a barrier that need not exist. In an increasingly multicultural society, we can learn from and appreciate one another.

Understandably, Alaska Native artisans don't want non-Natives representing themselves or their art as authentically Native, particularly for profit. Yet many Alaska Native artists have derived ideas, methods and materials from the world outside their own.

Aakatchaq is one such person, feeling deeply for her origins and heritage but finding sometimes untraditional and more contemporary means of expression. Her work suggests she has a great deal of potential. She respects the past but is not bound by it. Her "longing," as she describes it, to show her love of her culture is conveyed in a maze of artistic avenues, some old and some new.

Don Decker is an Anchorage artist, teacher and writer.

WORKS BY AAKATCHAQ will be on display through Aug. 3 at the Alaska Native Arts Foundation Gallery, Sixth Avenue and E Street.

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